Kamichu! (かみちゅ!) is a Japanese anime television series, strongly influenced by the Shinto religion, that follows the adventures of teenagegoddess Yurie Hitotsubashi and her friends. The title is short for Kamisama de Chūgakusei (かみさまでちゅうがくせい, lit., "A Deity As a Middle School Student"). The series was created by Besame Mucho (ベサメムーチョ,Besamemūcho), which is the joint pen name of producer Tomonori Ochikoshi, director Koji Masunari, and writer Hideyuki Kurata. It was broadcast by the anime television network Animax on its respective networks worldwide, including Japan, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, where it received its first English-language broadcast.

On July 3, 2008, Geneon Entertainment and Funimation Entertainment announced an agreement to distribute select titles in North America. While Geneon Entertainment will still retain the license, Funimation Entertainment will assume exclusive rights to the manufacturing, marketing, sales and distribution of select titles. Kamichu! was one of several titles involved in the deal.[2] However, as of August 2011, the rights to the series had expired.[3]

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Yurie is a petite, shy, and otherwise ordinary middle school girl who suddenly discovers that, overnight, she has become a kami, a goddess in the Shinto sense. She has no idea what sort of goddess she is or what her powers are. Her friends give her the nickname Kamichu, a portmanteau of kami (神, god) and chūgakusei (中学生, "middle school student"). In her journey she meets many other divinities and spirits, and learns the ways of the gods in order to become a great goddess herself. During the course of the series, Yurie grows more in being both a better goddess and as a person.

Kamichu! is set in the Spring of 1983 to the Spring of 1984,[4] in the city of Onomichi, Hiroshima prefecture, on the shores of Japan's Inland Sea. Many of the temples and landmarks shown in the anime are real locations in and around the city, faithfully depicted.

Yurie is the protagonist of the series. In the first episode, she tells her best friend Mitsue that overnight she has become a goddess; how or why this became so is never further explained. She is remarkably naïve and simple-minded, but always has the best intentions. She has had a crush on Kenji Ninomiya for a long time, and gets very nervous and red-faced around him. Whenever she exercises her divine powers, her hair grows very long and she often falls asleep afterward, due to the taxing effort involved. At the end of the anime she becomes Kenji's girlfriend.

Matsuri is the person in charge of the Raifuku Shrine in Onomichi. She runs the shrine with her sister, Miko, and their widowed father, the chief priest. Matsuri is always thinking of schemes to earn money for the shrine or attract more visitors to the it, usually through exploiting Yurie's newfound divinity. Unlike Miko, she cannot see spirits without the charms that Yurie usually writes (though in the manga and anime, Miko states that Matsuri had been able to see spirits in her childhood). Her name means "worship".

Mitsue is Yurie's bespectacled best friend. She's very down-to-earth, and serves as the "straight man" for her friends, but wishes that her life were more exciting. Yurie often goes to her for advice, which is simple common sense that is always right. She is usually possessed by Yashima when he needs to communicate with people or when he wants to play the guitar.

Miko is Matsuri's shy younger sister. She does the cooking in the house, and is very polite and respectful to everyone. She helps out in the shrine and has the ability to see spirits. She has a crush on the shrine's god, Yashima, whom she often speaks with. Her name, Miko, is also the term for a Shinto shrine attendant.

Kenji is the president and only member of his school's calligraphy club. He is quiet, aloof, and rather slow on the uptake. He loves his brushes, and he often does calligraphy for the Raifuku shrine. He only does calligraphy when he is 'inspired', yet it takes him a while to realise that most of his sources of inspiration revolve around Yurie, who has an intense crush on him. At the end of the anime, he becomes Yurie's boyfriend.

Yashima is the local kami of the Raifuku shrine. He wishes to be a rock star, so he often possesses Mitsue (who is totally against this) in order to fulfil his dream. He is also often seen with an Akita Inu that talks. He seems to be close friends with Miko Saegusa, but it is implied that he is more interested in her sister, Matsuri.

Shoukichi is Yurie's younger brother, who like Miko, attends the same school as his older sister, one grade below. Often, he acts more mature than his sister and often teases her, but he does love her. He has a crush on Miko, and acts differently and blushes whenever he is around her.

The three tiny spirits that the God Association sends to Yurie as her assistants. Their names are puns, as they were given by Yurie for unrelated reasons but correspond to the animals that they resemble. Chou is a butterfly, Ino is a boar and Shika is a deer. "Ino-Shika-Chou" is also a winning hand in the cards game, Hanafuda.

There are sixteen episodes in the anime series. Twelve episodes were broadcast on TV Asahi in 720p, omitting episodes 8, 11, 13, and 16. The DVD release included all sixteen episodes. The opening theme was "Fair Weather Followed by Fair Weather" (晴れのちハレ!,Hare Nochi Hare!) performed by Maho Tomita, and the closing theme was "Ice Candy" (アイスキャンディー,Aisu Kyandī) performed by MAKO.

The titles of several episodes are from Japanese pop songs from the 1980s and 1990s.

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Title

Original air date

1

"The Spite of Youth"Transcription: "Seishun no Ijiwaru" (Japanese: 青春のいじわる)

June 29, 2005 (2005-06-29)

When Yurie announces during lunch that she had become a god the previous night, Matsuri, as the daughter of a Shinto priest, tries to help her figure out what kind of god she is. During their efforts, Yurie accidentally creates a typhoon, which she has to dispel to save Kenji.

Matsuri decides her family's Raifuku Shrine will host a festival in honour of Yurie, but discovers Yashima, the god of the shrine, has gone missing. Yurie travels to the land of the gods to convince him to return.

The god of poverty arrives in town, sending the local economy into a depression; and Yurie's pet cat, Tama, goes missing. These two events may have something in common. Poverty god ends up sharing Tama's body.

Kiyomi, a freshman, comes to Yurie seeking love advice - but the object of her crush is Kenji. Trying earnestly as a good goddess to help her rival nonetheless, Yurie joins Kenji's calligraphy club with her.

7

"Lovers of the Sun"Transcription: "Taiyō no Koibito-tachi" (Japanese: 太陽の恋人たち)

August 24, 2005 (2005-08-24)

During the summer holidays, Yurie and her friends go to a quiet part of the seashore and explore an abandoned beach house. The gods living there want to know what has become of the people who once enjoyed themselves there, and Yurie fulfills their wish.

Strange packs of cats have been roaming the town recently, and Tama is among them. Yurie follows her and turns into a cat to meet the charismatic feline, Tyler Meowden (an homage to Tyler Durden), who wants to revolt against humans. She and Tama fight to stop him.

9

"Crossing the River of Time"Transcription: "Toki no Kawa o Koete" (Japanese: 時の河を越えて)

August 31, 2005 (2005-08-31)

Yurie and her friends meet an old man named Gen who was once a crewman of the battleship Yamato. Shortly afterward, she receives a message from the sunken battleship, which wants to visit its home port again.

When Yurie resolves to give Kenji some Honmei choco ("true feelings chocolate") for Valentine's Day and confess her love, the entire school and everyone in town pitches in to help her. After a brief, awkward conversation on the school's rooftop, the two are lifted into the sky upon a large piece of paper (upon which Kenji had written the kanji for 'love'). As they soar above the town, Kenji tells Yurie that he loves her, because she is strange. The character on the flying paper turns into the kanji for 'strange'.

Yurie, Mitsue and Matsuri enjoy shopping. Yurie loses her way and meets a god of old fashioned toy who is almost forgotten by people. Yurie plays with the toy, and the god arises in people's mind for a while. That reminds Yurie herself the appreciation for her own friends.

On New Year's Eve, Yurie helps the Yashima Shrine. Kenji gives a practice of a big-scaled calligraphy to Yurie. Yurie is worried about that she can't confess her love to Kenji. At the moment the god Benzaiten drops in to see Yurie and encourages her.

When Kiyomi wants to give a chocolate to Kenji for Valentine's Day, Yurie helps her. Kiyomi notices that Kenji is in love with Yurie unconsciously. So she decides to back away from Kenji and gives him her chocolate just as an appreciation. But Yurie misunderstands the situation because she sees Kenji receives it so readily.

While Yurie is stuck in her room, the town economy gets down again. Yurie tries to bounce herself back and figure out the reason. She happened to know Kiyomi's feelings on her way and finds out the reason of the bad economy, too. But she is still nervous to confess her love to Kenji. At the moment, lots of incidents related to proverbs happen in the whole town.

Troubles are made by Kenji's calligraphies and a spiritual paper weight he happened to pick up. They tear all the calligraphy but the last one "snowy season" (冬将軍) is blown away. So Kenji and Yurie writes big "first spring storm" (春一番) on the snow in union. When Yurie shouts "Kamichu", spring suddenly comes and Kenji sees the long haired girl standing beside him holding their hands.